Top Shows of 2012 - Time Magazine

I just posted details on the top 5, although the list includes 10 (entire list below). I disagree on the order....thoughts? I don't watch Parks and Recreation, so I have no business commenting on its position at #1, but it bothers me. It should be BB or even Homeland. 5. Mad Men

If the truest definition of art is to generate a strong reaction, the fifth season of Mad Men was the most successful show on TV in 2012. Stylistically, the series was working at its highest level, laying out one visually stunning set piece after another (â€œZou Bisou Bisou,â€ Roger Sterlingâ€™s acid trip, Lane Pryceâ€™s, er, hanging out at the office). Overall â€” to this critic anyway â€” Season 5 was greater in its parts than its whole, producing some impressive, structurally daring episodes that didnâ€™t add up to the same gut punch as did, say, the showâ€™s dissection of Don Draper in Season 4. But a little perspective: lesser Mad Men is still pretty great TV, and Season 5 was enough to make one glad that the â€™60s (at least on AMC) are not over yet. (AMC)

In Season 4, teacher turned cancer patient turned meth dealer Walter White (Bryan Cranston) became â€œthe one who knocks.â€ In the first half of Season 5, White vanquished his enemies and cemented his business success â€” and yet, if you listened closely, you could hear the knuckles of fate knocking on his own door. Would he be done in by his DEA agent brother-in-law (Dean Norris)? By the many enemies he collected in the meth business? By his ill use of his partner Jess (Aaron Paul) or his unforgivable treatment of his wife Skyler (Anna Gunn)? Or simply by the cancer that was gone but never quite forgotten? The first half of an extended farewell season raised rather than answered these questions, but it also proved that a series could make a character wholly despicable yet utterly fascinating. (AMC)

3. Homeland

At the end of last year (after TIMEâ€™s 2011 best-of list closed), America narrowly escaped a terrorist attack from ex-POW Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), but at great personal cost to his CIA pursuer/lover Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes). In Season 2, the show upended its story, having Carrie expose Brody and turn him as a double agent, but if anything their relationship became more dangerous, on many levels. A grownup thriller for the second decade after 9/11, Homeland combined an intense cloak-and-dagger story with a multilayered portrayal of the psychic toll this work takes on the people who do it. (Showtime)

2. Louie

Louis CKâ€™s half-hour weekly movie is one of the few wholly surprising things on television. Week to week, it can be just about anything: rawly funny or poignantly dramatic; scatological or psychological; a collection of vignettes or a single, three-episode-long story. The third season took the title character, a comedian and divorced dad, on journeys of self-discovery â€” be it a lost weekend in Miami, a bizarre and emotionally draining date, a quest to take over David Lettermanâ€™s job or, in the finale, a surreal but moving solo journey to China. At once darkly funny and unembarrassedly sentimental, this truly one-of-a-kind show was a 13-episode argument for engaging with the world, as tough as the world sometimes makes it. (FX)

1. Parks and Recreation

In an election year, there is ample reason to feel depressed about politics and the people involved in it. So it was doubly welcome to have this full-hearted, brilliant civil-servant sitcom expand its purview from the Pawnee, Ind., parks department to the city council and Washington itself. In the first half of 2012, it took Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) through a bumpy but successful campaign against a local candy-company scion (Paul Rudd); in the last half, it sent her boyfriend/campaign manager Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott) to the capital but found time to get the pair engaged. On two levels â€” political and personal â€” it was the yearâ€™s best love story. (NBC)

I love me some Downton Abbey, but I don't think it is top 5 material. It's really a soap opera with English accents and the awesome Maggie Smith. However, I do think it's better than American Horror Story, which I also love. It deserves to be in the top 10.

I love me some Downton Abbey, but I don't think it is top 5 material. It's really a soap opera with English accents and the awesome Maggie Smith. However, I do think it's better than American Horror Story, which I also love. It deserves to be in the top 10.

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It's a shame what's happened to Downton. Why did they have to turn Papa Downton into such a cunt, and kill off the hottest chick on the show?

There ain't one Reggie left on that show that I'm rooting for.

it's.................

Breaking Bad
Mad Men
Homeland
and the rest, in no specific order..................................The Walking Dead, Downton Abbey, Dexter, Once Upon a Time, and Fringe

I've never seen it, I've heard it's good. I'll make sure to DVR it now, but TV shows are hard to find .

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OK - well then you need to also watch, if you have not already: 'NTSF:SD:SUV', which stars Paul Scheer from The League. That is on Adult Swim with Children's Hospital (Rob Corddry). 'Tim and Eric Awesome Show - Great Job!' and 'Check It Out with Dr. Steve Brule'.